Crews cutting up dead whale that keeps floating to shore

Orange County lifeguards have had to tow the dead whale out to sea at least four times, only to have if drift back to the beach yet again. Officials say they will remove the carcass on Sunday. The whale was a star of several viral videos.Encinitas lifeguards said that the whale had been floating and decaying in the water for about two weeks. Work was halted when part of a forklift snapped off during the effort.

“We’re pretty sure of it because of the other agencies we’ve spoken to”, Giles said.

Hauling the 45-foot-long humpback whale carcass offshore into drifting currents wasn’t working.

Lifeguards said high tides carried the rotten carcass a short distance north toward Ponto Beach on Saturday night, before a contracted construction crew arrived to cut it into several large pieces and haul it away.

DANA POINT, CA-It was just a week ago that a stubborn, putrid whale carcass drifted into Dana Point, just a short time after the same dead whale visited Newport Beach, and Dockweiler State Beach before that. National Marine Fisheries officials verified it was the remains of Wally, a 15-year-old female often spotted over the years alive and spouting off the coast of Orange County.

Last year, photographers who caught up with Wally off the coast of Newport Beach captured footage of the whale as she went to the surface. In one, the sunlight catches her spout so that it looks like she is breathing out a rainbow.

Winkley writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.